Estonia hits the big time! A New Yorker Cover

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Estonia has hit the big time.

When readers of The New Yorker magazine get their Thanksgiving issue this week, they’ll see the cover image of an illustrated turkey carved into sections representing all of the strange people one might find at a Thanksgiving dinner. Tucked just under the neck (for some, the most coveted dark meat on the bird) are the words:

Monosyllabic Estonian Exchange Student

Apparently such a guest at the dinner table is just as odd as ‘UFO Buff Cousin’ or ‘Nazi-Biker Grandma.’

Surely no insult was intended by the  enlightened folks at this dynamic magazine. I can only assume that this exchange student is monosyllabic in English because as anyone who has tried to learn Estonian knows, there are more than enough syllables in any simple expression to tie your tongue in knots. Maybe the chiefs at the New Yorker are savvy enough to be referencing the persistent Estonian trait of stoic understatement.

Whatever their reasons, it is indicative of the American habit of using ‘Estonian’ and ‘Estonia’ as a by-word for something strange, distant and unverifiable. It is much the same as the way the word, ‘accountant’ is a by-word for nerd, or boring.

“Oh God, I just hope my blind date isn’t some accountant.”

“If you mess up this project, you won’t even be able to find work in Estonia!”

It got me thinking a bit about the other times I have seen Estonia depicted in foreign media. Amazingly it was fairly often.

For instance. There is a recurring character on the Simpsons simply referred to as The Estonian Midget. He is hired to impersonate Lisa Simpson and via due diligence he shadows her for several weeks to get her character right. Lisa, who is surely a New Yorker reader, is thrilled. “That midget taught me a lot about his native Estonia,” she says.

There is also a character on the HBO show True Blood who hails from Estonia. First introduced in the episode, “Lie Back, Sweetheart, And Think Of Estonia,” Yvetta is used as a sex slave by hunky Nordic vampire (is there any other kind) Eric.  As every Estonian who has seen the show will point out, Yvetta speaks Russian on the show. Indeed the actress playing Yvetta, Natasha Alam, is from mostly Russian speaking Uzbekistan. Why the character couldn’t have been from the equally ‘exotic’ central Asian republic is something we may never know.

So, what other references to strange, mysterious, unknowable, exotic Estonia can you come up with? Let us know in the comments section.

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